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Major Trends
- The number of number-one ranks held by US universities decreases from 34 in 2018 to 28 in 2019;
- Harvard University remains the world-leader, ranking number-one for 12 subjects, followed by MIT, which leads in 11 subjects.
- Switzerland has become the world's third-best higher education system. Impressive performances from ETH Zurich mean that only the United States and United Kingdom occupy more top-10 ranks;
- The United Kingdom has remained resilient despite Brexit uncertainty, increasing its share of number-one ranks from 10 to 13 and improving research performance across the board;
- Singapore is Asia's outstanding system, with more top-10 university departments than the rest of the continent's universities combined;
- China continues to increase its competitiveness, recording a higher share of top-50 departments than ever-before;
- Brazil remains embattled, declining at a rate greater than the Latin American average.
QS World University Rankings by Subject 2019:
Top-10 countries by number of top-10 departments
Location Number of top-10 departments
United States 234
United Kingdom 137
Switzerland 22
Australia 18
Canada 15
Singapore 14
Netherlands 12
Italy 6
Mainland China 4
Sweden 4
(c) TopUniversities.com
Ben Sowter, Research Director at QS, said: "The major narrative emerging here is the perhaps-inexorable erosion of United States pre-eminence. Since 2015, it has lost 10% of its top-ranked research departments, with China, Australia, and the United Kingdom the major beneficiaries. UK research performance stays strong despite considerable funding cuts, though the contribution that EU research collaboration has made to this success cannot be understated."
University Leader Subjects
Harvard 12
MIT 11
Oxford 6
UCL 2
Universities leading in one Subject
British Columbia, Cambridge, Colorado School of Mines, Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, ETH Zurich, Julliard School, Karolinska Institute, LSE, Loughborough, Royal College of Art, Royal Veterinary College, La Sapienza, Stanford, University of Amsterdam, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, UPenn, Pittsburgh, Sussex, Wageningen.
Methodology: https://www.topuniversities.com/subject-rankings/methodology
[1] 'Most-consulted' refers to data from media monitoring platform Meltwater, corroborated by insights from SimilarWeb, Alexa, and Google Analytics.